Daphne Jones
Daphne Jones was born in the City - a planet-wide metropolis and a libertarian's dream, where the culture is ruled by megacorporations unfettered by regulations, laws, or common decency and most people exist in a half-living state as wage slaves. As a child, her talent with a computer supported her as part of a freelance corporate espionage team. At the age of 13, a talent scout for Piltdown Heavy Industries noticed her innate beauty and recruited her as a party girl. As a party girl, her job was to attend the almost nightly corporate social events and "make nice" with the guests... doing whatever was desired by anyone who took an interest in her - men, women, aliens... even the occasional emancipated robot. (As one would expect in a libertarian society, any machine that could pass a sentience test could claim emancipation. Eventually, the high court ruled that merely requesting emancipation was sufficient to prove sentience... and, of course, the advanced intelligent machine industry collapsed overnight.) After several years as a party girl, the debts for her company-supplied bed and board far exceeded her income and, like everyone else, she was trapped as a wage slave. Actual slavery was illegal in the City, of course... that would be anti-libertarian. One night at a party, a client named Charlie slipped her a rufie and she woke up on an outbound spaceship. While she suspected Piltdown had sold her to cover her debts, it could never be proven... certainly not from her unknown position out in space. Over the next few months, Charlie kept her locked in the EVA locker (where the spacesuits were kept) whenever he wasn't enjoying her company. Charlie's business activities as he travelled the spacelanes were no more legitimate than his enjoyment of Daphne's company. One day, it caught up with him... and they fled a planet pursued by the local space patrol. Charlie tossed her in the EVA locker without bothering to restrain her. She kicked her way through the flimsy locker door, donned a space suit, and sat down at a computer console. Using her hacking skills from her childhood, she broke into the computer system, and, just as Charlie sent the ship into slip and looked back to realize she was no longer in the locker, she overode the airlock safety protocol and opened both airlock doors... and Charlie, who was not wearing a suit, was no more. The slip landed her in orbit about an isolated star with nothing but rubble orbting it. It took her a week to clean up the mess... then several months to work through the manuals stored in the computer and learn how to operate the ship. At first, when she slipped back to the known space lanes, she was an indifferent space pilot - incompetent even. But she learned fast and used the cargo and credits on board the ship build up a small trade business. In time she found herself at the Botany Bay colony on Nova Gaia as do many freetraders. Thriving in the abundance and good governance of the colony, she expanded Apollo Trading and Salvage to a sizable trade company with a ground base and an orbiting station at Botany Bay as well as company warehouses and offices on several other planets. More about Daphne, ATS, and some of the planets she trades on may be found at apollosalvage.com. Category:Characters